Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

By the end of year we aim to have a national framework around that and then we will have to implement it. Because the cost of the public sector is higher than the private, that report looked at costs from 2019. It made it clear that those private nursing home costs were likely to have increased during Covid-19. The Expert Panel Report indicated that perhaps they need to increase staffing levels to some extent, in some cases. The gap will narrow between the units. Some units are particularly challenged because beds were closed and the number of staff cannot be reduced just because beds are closed. It depends on where the beds are closed. The same cost gets spread over a smaller number of beds and the cost per bed goes up.